ISW assesses Moscow is shifting from incremental battlefield gains to a winter strike campaign against Ukraine's energy grid and communications backbone.
Intelligence Lead
Reciprocal strikes across Russia and Ukraine killed at least ten people in the 24 hours to 26 September, as the Institute for the Study of War assessed that Moscow's stalling ground offensive is pushing Vladimir Putin toward a long-range strike campaign against Ukrainian energy and communications infrastructure as his primary theory of victory heading into winter. The shift signals that the war's center of gravity is moving from the trench line to the grid, with implications for both sides' civilian resilience and negotiating leverage.
Situation Report
Ukrainian officials confirmed four deaths from Russian drone and missile strikes on 25-26 September — two women killed in Zaporizhzhia when a residential building collapsed, and two more in a separate attack on Sumy. Russian and occupation authorities reported six deaths on their side: three in Russia's Krasnodar region and three in Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia. Russia launched 162 drones on 25 September and a further 173 overnight into 26 September, according to reporting cited by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Ukrainian forces struck the Ilsky oil refinery and adjacent industrial sites in Krasnodar Krai, starting fires and temporarily halting operations — the latest in a run of Ukrainian strikes on Russian refining capacity that has also hit facilities at Perm and Novoshakhtinsk in the preceding days. Russia struck a Kyiv data center supporting mobile internet and Starlink-linked connectivity, and a cargo vessel carrying military supplies was hit near Odesa, damaging a logistics hub.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said "Russia is escalating every single day" and called for "stronger responses" from allies. Vladimir Putin said a settlement proposal "remained on the table" while accusing Ukraine of striking the Russian capital's periphery; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said "Europe is doing everything it can to thwart peace talks" and reiterated that Moscow's military objectives would be achieved. US President Donald Trump said he wants "him to settle with Putin, and Putin to settle with him," floating a possible deal "before the heavy winter." US and Ukrainian officials denied a Bloomberg report that Trump had asked Zelensky to travel to Moscow for talks.
Background & Context
Nearly four and a half years into Russia's invasion, front-line movement has slowed to localized, incremental gains — Ukrainian forces have recently advanced east of Slovyansk and in western Zaporizhia Oblast, while ISW reports Ukraine is shifting tactics toward systematically targeting Russian reinforcement of infiltrations rather than immediately clearing them, a resource-conserving adjustment. Russian military bloggers cited by ISW have pointed to a "pervasive culture of lying" within Russian command structures as a factor enabling Ukrainian successes near Lyman.
Mutual strikes on energy infrastructure — Ukrainian hits on Russian refineries, Russian hits on Ukrainian grid and data infrastructure — have escalated through the summer and into autumn 2026, with each side treating the other's fuel revenue and civilian resilience as legitimate strategic targets. Parallel to the strikes, a diplomatic track continues at low intensity: a proposed UAE-hosted meeting of US, Russian, and Ukrainian officials, and separate Black Sea shipping talks involving Egypt, India, and Turkey, indicate channels remain open even as both capitals publicly blame the other for stalling them.
Analysis & Assessment
It is assessed with high confidence, per ISW's campaign analysis, that stalled territorial progress is driving the Kremlin to rely more heavily on its long-range strike campaign — built around mass employment of jet-powered Geran-type drones — as the mechanism through which it now expects to compel Ukrainian capitulation, rather than through further ground advances. The near-simultaneous drone volumes reported on 25 and 26 September (162 and 173 respectively) are consistent with a sustained rather than episodic campaign.
Ukraine's reciprocal strikes on Russian refining capacity are assessed as a calibrated economic-pressure response rather than retaliatory symbolism: targeting Ilsky, Perm, and Novoshakhtinsk in succession suggests a deliberate campaign against Russian fuel export revenue and domestic supply, which is likely to widen rather than narrow the mutual-infrastructure-targeting dynamic through the autumn.
Trump's public "settle" framing, issued alongside a denied report of a Moscow-summit request, is judged to reflect a probing diplomatic posture rather than a substantive proposal — both Washington's rhetoric and the Kremlin-Kyiv mutual-blame exchange over who is escalating appear oriented toward domestic and allied audiences rather than an imminent negotiated off-ramp. The decisive variable for the winter campaign is whether Ukraine's emerging counter-drone measures against Geran-type systems reach operational scale before Russia's strike tempo matures; available reporting does not yet establish that they have.